A long-time resident of Berkeley, Calif., Thomas W. Tenney and his wife Margaret took up photography in a serious way in the 1950s, eventually becoming professionals. For over a decade beginning the mid-1960s, the Tenneys' summer vacations in New England became the occasion for photographing colonial and early national gravestones, culminating in a public exhibition of their work in 1972 at the Bolles Gallery in San Francisco.

The Tenney collection consists of several hundred scrupulously-documented images of gravestones in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and other New England states taken between 1966 and 1978. Selecting stones for "artistic rather than historical reasons," the Tenney's focused primarily on details of the carving and inscriptions.

Terms of Access and Use:

The collection is open for research.

Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries